“Roger,” the sergeant said, pulling out another grenade. He pinged the rest of the Hammers and the group all shoved grenades as deep into the rubble as their arms would go, retracting fast. O’Neal, again, had invented the rubble-dubble technique and once upon a time it was dangerous before suits developed an engineering database that could determine trap points. At least one poor bastard had had his hand blown off when he couldn’t pull his arm back in time. But that problem had been solved long ago.

All six of the grenades were detonated on signal and the rubble wall more or less evaporated. The explosion threw one of the Hammers off his feet, but everyone else was cocked and locked.

“Let’s roll,” Mike said, heading for the opening. “There’s Posleen ass to kick.”

“And you get to roll behind us, sir,” Sergeant Rawls said, jumping into the opening.

“Spoil-sport.”

Julio paused at the intersection of the connecting tunnel and looked back. His section, which had ended up collapsing two bunkers for zero openings, had made it across the killing zone to follow the general. But his section head had sent him a quick ping telling him to stay with the Hammers.

That should have meant that his section was out in front and he was following behind. Instead, true to form, the General was on point. Damn it. Which put him at an intersection that was probably going to be crawling with fire.

“C kilo subars,” the general said, palming one of the devices and sliding his armored thumb down the blank face until the readout showed an output equivalent to one hundred kilos, about two hundred twenty pounds, of TNT. “X form. Hammers, right. Bravo Section right. Double stack.”

Julio thumbed a grenade himself, dialing it down then felt a slight thump as someone bumped into him from behind, forming a “stack” of troopers. As soon as the grenades went off, the stack would rush the corridor to the right. He glanced over and saw Corporal Kermit Butler on the point of the left-hand stack.